Alex's swim journal

Milestone, Meet results, new PRs

Passed that 100-mile mark for the year with my meet warm-up today. Shoulder felt good after the icing yesterday and with slight adjustments on the backstroke breakout. Got my counts down for back and got used to the new ceiling. My SDKs really helped out a lot today (on both fly and back) and it feels like they're getting stronger. Did a couple of starts at the end of the warm-up period and felt good about that too. So, then it was bring it on... pain-fest 2013! Here were my results with (seed times in parenthesis):

I was pretty tired by the time I got to that 200 breast, my pull-outs were too shallow and my left foot was breaking the surface on the first full stroke after walls at 75, 100, 125, etc. so the referee called me on a scissor kick. Scotty got video of it... the kick is uneven, with the left leg wanting to whip around faster than the right, but still a lot better now than I was on my 50 breast at the last meet. I'll need to slow it down in my kick drills to even it out. I actually wasn't too disappointed with this DQ, it's something I've been working on and which is getting better... I joked about using this event as my cool-down, but my time was still 6-8 seconds faster than anything I've been able to manage in practice on 200 breast lately.

400 IM: I missed a PR by a good :05 on this, but I had told myself going in that I just wanted to swim hard but relaxed, good form and finish legal. The 200 Back was the one I knew I might have a good shot at swimming a decent PR in if I didn't overdo it on the 400 IM... even with this relaxed attitude, though, I was nervous as heck about doing my first 400 IM in a meet setting (I was thinking "just get through the 100 fly, just get through the 100 fly"); So, apparently I'm the only one in my age group doing these middle-distance events at this point in the season, so a legal finish in all 5 events would automatically mean "blue ribbon"! Darn, I should have paid more attention to the kick on that 200 breast, it would have been a clean sweep! How often does a slow guy like me get to show off a bunch of "first places"? Oh, and bonus, there were only three people swimming the 400 IM--third place overall?! Yes, feel my bronze glow. I was surprised, usually there are at least 4 or 5 swimmers in that event.

I was very pleased with both my 200 back and my 200 IM... slowly those are creeping into the low 3:00-range, and I would love to get them under 3:00 as I continue to learn the ends and outs of these strokes and work on building speed and endurance in each. Half-way through my 200 free, third middle distance event in about 20 minutes, I was thinking "I'm retiring after this meet... I never have to swim in a meet again"; then I found some hidden reserve in the last 25-50 yards and came close to my practice PR of 2:44. Go figure. Nice rest before the 200 IM, probably 20-30 minutes.

Facilities at Whitefish Bay HS were very nice. Even though I had lane 1 in my heat of the 200 back, for example, there was a nice warm-up area off to my left, so, no lane had the "wall" to deal with. The blocks were beautiful; the bleachers, spacious; showers, nice. And the meet was very well run. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.